Pro Life News

Obama: Roe v Wade Gives Daughters the Same Chance as Sons to ‘Fulfill Their Dreams’

“As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that
this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and
reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that
government should not intrude on private family matters,” the president
said as he commemorated the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court nationalized
abortion law.

“I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to
choose and this fundamental constitutional right,” the president
continued, according to barackobama.com.
“While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue—no matter what our
views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended
pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for
abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.”

Although
most of the presidents’ remarks were unsurprising (his record shows
that he has long favored pro-abortion legislation), the way he chose to
end his commemoration has drawn criticism.

“And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue
our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights,
freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams [emphasis added],” the president said.

It’s
because of this type of rhetoric that many anti-abortion critics have
accused strong “pro-choice” advocates of being intellectually dishonest
in regards to the discussion of abortion.

Even though the
president made sure to include all the politically safe buzzwords (i.e.
“rights,” “opportunities,” etc.), his message failed to mention what
many consider the fundamental issue at stake: is it a human life?

One would expect that an intellectually honest discussion — either for or against abortion — would at leastinclude
a reference to this question. However, the president avoids this,
claims that it’s “a sensitive and often divisive issue“ and then throws
his support behind the side of ”choice.”

Why?

If it’s such a
“divisive” issue, then surely the leader of the free world has a good
reason for falling so hard on one side of the debate. Perhaps he knows
something that opponents of abortion don’t. Maybe it’s not a life.

Why ignore this critical issue, admit that abortion is a “divisive” issue, choose one side, and then simply move on?

Perhaps President Obama, like many proponents of a “woman’s right to choose” (or as the columnist Ann Coulter likes
to say, a woman’s “right to have sex with men they don’t want to have
children with”), has opted to avoid the “life issue” because the
possible answer to that question — that it is indeed a human life —
would render his position on “choice” indefensible. That is to say,
should the debate over life ever conclude that the unborn child is a
human being, but advocates of “choice” still want legalized abortion,
they may find it awfully difficult to defend the Orwellian viewpoint
that all humans have a “right to choose,“ but some have more ”choice”
than others.

“Those who are helpless are, it is all but universally held in America, to be protected,” the conservative author William F. Buckley Jr.
once wrote. “The one-day-old child is protected with the full force of
the law. The proposition that he is without rights when he is minus one
day old is nothing more than a social convention conflating various
concerns.”

Maybe it’s because abortion advocates realize
the apparent absurdity of the “minus one day” argument that they have
chosen to avoid the “life issue” altogether and focus entirely on
“women’s rights.” So when Buckley asks if an abortion involves the
termination of a human life, his question is ultimately ignored and the
response is something along the lines of “one can‘t infringe on a
woman’s ‘constitutionally protected reproductive rights.’”

But is it a human life?

Critics
believe that this refusal by abortion advocates to engage in the debate
over whether an unborn child is a human being, and instead couch the
issue in terms of “choice” and “rights,” has led to an increasing amount
of frustration among opponents of abortion.

And why shouldn’t
it? If one truly believes that a human life is at stake, as “pro-lifers”
surely do, then the idea of “disposing” of it — even if it’s “safe,”
“legal,” and “rare” — is wholly unacceptable and no amount
of repeating the “safe and rare” mantra will change that. Furthermore,
as far as “pro-lifers” are concerned, wrapping the abortion debate in
politically correct terms and then trying to market it as a means to
help women “fulfill their dreams” is more than disingenuous — it’s
insulting.

Joseph Scheidler, who Pat Buchanan once referred to as
“the godfather of the pro-life moment,” says that the “safe, legal, and
rare” argument (first employed by the Clinton administration and now
used by the Obama administration) is “illogical.”

“They’ve been saying that since the beginning. That’s still something we must fight,” Scheidler told this author last year.
“The bottom line is still the same: You cannot destroy an innocent
human life. You don’t target children. What kind of a society does that?
We cannot and will not buy any of that illogical ‘safe and rare’
argument.”

“When you say ‘legal but rare,‘ that’s like saying,
‘We’ll still kill children and old people but only rarely.’ The fact is
that you are still killing a person. It shouldn’t be legal. Those are
just words,” he continued. “It‘s got to be illegal because it’s wrong to
kill people. If you don’t stop it there, then it only makes sense to
continue down the road we have been on.”

Of course, Scheidler’s
line of reasoning only works if the unborn child is indeed a human being
— which is precisely the discussion being avoided.

Rather than
address these arguments and come to an agreement over whether or not the
unborn child is a human being, staunch “choice” advocates prefer to
defend their position with arguments about “personal health choices” and
“keeping the government out of the bedroom” (ironically enough, these
“bedroom rights” and “health choices” are all but forgotten the moment
these “choice” advocates get involved in regulating light bulbs,
gallons-per-flush, the amount of salt in food, trans fats, school
lunches, and smoking).

Considering that the president is a strong
supporter of a “woman’s right to choose,“ and that ”pro-choice“ rhetoric
often invokes ”rights“ and ”choice“ but ignores the ”life issue,”
should his Roe v Wade speech come as a surprise?

Recall that as a
senator, the president voted four times against legislation to protect
the life of a baby that survived a botched abortion, according to CNS News. He voted against such legislation at the state level in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

“The
2003 bill was assigned to the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services
Committee, which Obama chaired at the time,” writes Fred Lucas of
CNS News. “It mirrored a law passed by Congress, which said nothing in
federal law should be construed to undermine the Roe v. Wade ruling.”

As
president, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,
(i.e. “Obamacare”), which would “appropriate federal money toward
insurance plans that pay for abortions.”

Therefore, after taking
into consideration his continued support for pro-abortion legislation
and even the fact that he believes pregnancy can be a “punishment,” the presidents’ comments regarding the 39th anniversary of Roe v Wade aren’t terribly surprising.

In
fact, as far as an open and intellectually honest discussion from a
strong supporter of “reproductive rights” is concerned, his remarks are
about par for the course.

America's Shop of Horrors: Manufacturing Babies Only to Destroy Them

Reprinted from Catholic Online

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - The Republican presidential
candidates have agreed lately that one of America's big problems is that
we don't manufacture things here anymore. That's not entirely
accurate. We manufacture babies now, and business is booming, both for
the makers and the destroyers. One of the women featured in that
hideous New York Times magazine story, "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy" articulated it perfectly:

"If
I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn't have reduced this
pregnancy, because you feel like if there's a natural order, then you
don't want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an
artificial manner - in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the
embryo placed in me - and somehow, making a decision about how many to
carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so
consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could
control."

The story attempts to deal with the ethical
dilemma caused by the increasingly common practice of "reducing" triplet
and twin pregnancies when the mother says she only wants one child.
The author, Ruth Padawer, asks, "What is it about terminating half a
twin pregnancy that seems more controversial than reducing triplets to
twins or aborting a single fetus? After all, the math's the same either
way: one fewer fetus."

Indeed, she has a point. Just the
wrong point. The point is it's reprehensible no matter how many babies
are being terminated. But in this case it's particularly odious because
these parents requisitioned their babies and then discarded the
"extras" they decided they didn't want. In a bid for sympathy, we're
told how these women keep their "reduction" to themselves for fear of
disapproval.

"Secrecy is common among women undergoing
reduction to a singleton. Doctors who perform the procedure, aware of
the stigma, tell patients to be cautious about revealing their
decision. Some patients are so afraid of being treated with disdain
that they withhold this information from the obstetrician who will
deliver their child."

Awww, the poor, poor people so afraid of disdain and the sting of judgment! Sorry, I can't spare a tear.

It
is astonishing that our society still isn't shocked and sickened by
what we're doing to our own children. Good grief, people, what does it
take to get your attention? What does it take to awaken the natural
instinct to protect a child from harm? What does it take to blow away
the fog and see things as they really are?

(Ironically, the abortion zealots took great offense at the NY Times story, too. Sunsara Taylor over at RH Reality Check had a hissy fit over the "Moral Agonizing about Women's Reproductive Rights."
She writes, "The only basis for viewing the decision of a woman not to
carry every fetus to term as a "moral" or "ethical dilemma" is the
unscientific lie that treats fetuses like people, rather than as a
subordinate part of a woman's body.")

One of the more outrageous
segments of the NY Times article was about Shelby Van Voris who became
pregnant with triplets while under the care of a fertility specialist.
With her husband deployed in Iraq, Shelby was pumped full of hormone
injections and then artificially inseminated with the sperm he'd left
behind. When the doctor told her she was expecting three babies, she
yelled at him, "This is not an option for us! I want only one!"

He
then referred her to another doctor who did "reductions", but was told
the staff refused to reduce pregnancies below twins. Three other
doctors told her the same thing. "It was horrible," Shelby said.
"I felt like the pregnancy was a monster and I just wanted it out, but
because we tried for so long, abortion wasn't an option."

Shelby eventually found her way to Dr. Evans in New York and flew there for the "procedure." She told Dr. Evans, "You
choose whoever is going to be safe and healthy. I didn't give him any
other criteria. I didn't choose gender. None of that was up for grabs,
because I had to make this as ethically O.K. for me as I could. But I wanted only one."

But
wait, didn't she just say that since they'd tried for so long abortion
wasn't an option? Then what exactly did she pay to have done to two of
her babies? A "reduction"? How is that not an abortion? What did she think was done to them? Where are they now? They're dead! For $6,500, she got precisely what she wanted: one.

Shelby left the doctor's office
"incredibly relieved. 'I went out on that street with my mother and
jumped up and down saying, "I'm pregnant! I'm pregnant!' And then I
went out and bought baby clothes for the first time."

Someone
please tell me what kind of person is relieved that two of her babies
have been destroyed? And spare me the admonishment not to judge. It's
appropriate to judge these acts evil and question the
morality of one who commits such evil. We have to call it what it is.
It flourishes in our nation precisely because people are afraid to
"judge." They fear nothing like they fear being labeled judgmental.
They'd rather hide behind sophistry and euphemisms, like "reduction."
What are we reducing again? Oh, that's right - innocent human beings.
How, exactly? Just a lethal shot in the heart. No biggie.

That
a mother could dance in the street and celebrate after having paid for
the execution of two of her babies because she "only wanted one" is
chilling and grotesque beyond words. Two babies had to die for this
woman's intolerable selfishness. Stop calling it an option or a
personal choice. It is the most abhorrent violence.

We have a
thoroughly backwards sense of the unthinkable in our culture. It ought
to be unthinkable for parents and doctors to target babies in the womb
for execution. Instead, we find it unthinkable that they should not
have that "option." We find it intolerable that they should be
criticized and disgraced. Pitiful are we who find it more objectionable
to hurt someone's feelings than to expose evil and defend the helpless.

In
the slavery of the modern age, we buy and sell children as our
property. We "own" them in the way that gives us absolute power over
their very lives. We do not receive them anymore as gifts; instead we
manufacture them at will and afford them no greater value than any other
expensive trinket we buy for our momentary craving.

We pay to
bring them into existence for our own purposes and then when they become
inconvenient, we arrange for their demise with barely a second
thought. When the ethicality of their deaths becomes a bit muddled for
us, we employ clever terms like "reduction", "choice" and "reproductive
rights".

We assuage our guilt (what little we feel) by
insisting that the baby isn't human, isn't a person yet, but merely a
"fetus" (a term which now has a pejorative cast) and that makes it all
better. Never mind that it's absolute bull. We want to believe it
because we need to believe it in order to prop up the illusion that
we're not really exterminating our own kids with less compassion and
concern than the pest control guy has for the cockroaches in our homes.

We
kill our babies, but we add unthinkable insult to unimaginable injury
by denying them their humanity. We call them blobs of insentient
tissue; parasites; invaders. But worst of all, we call them unwanted,
even after we've gone to ridiculous lengths to manufacture them. We
order 'em up, and we order 'em killed.

But heaven forbid we should suffer any moral agonizing.

-----

Jennifer
Hartline is a grateful Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling
mother of three. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.
Visit her online at MCH and Wake Up, Deborah!